The contribution of TEFL 496 course to my professional development as a prospective teacher (By Ezgi Uluer )

This semester, i have taken translation course (English to Turkish). Even though our department is English teaching, this was a must course for us. As you all know we have to take some courses during this four years program that are not related to our profession. Personally i think that these courses is for our intellectual development. We will be teacher or not, still knowing about translation, literature or computer will not hurt us. Moreover, i think that teachers should be equipped with a lot of information. As we all experienced how it is to be a teacher in this semester in the field trips, we know that students are tend to ask things that are not related to lesson or things about literature etc. Therefore knowing more is never harmful. Therefore i think that putting such classes into English Teaching department is nice.


When it comes to what i have learnt from this course and how it is beneficial for me i can juxtapose many things, however i will mention about several main things here. Firstly, because it was my presentation topic, i could have a chance to learn about how the understandings of translation changed from republican area to today. By the way my presentation topic was article 6 "Cumhuriyet doneminde ceviri anlayislari" I had never taught how the understanding of translation was in the past etc. To be honest before this course i did not even know if there is different ideas about the translation. Therefore secondly, this course help me to understand there are different views about the translation work in the world. I understand that there are questions like; if the translator should be subjective or objective, whether it is good to depend on text or not, who good translator is or if there is a good translator, what the points are for a translator to be careful while translating, if translators earn well and if they are respected, etc. All these questions are investigated and discussed in this course and of course these discussions raised my awareness about the subject. As a teacher i gained some personal ideas thanks to these discussions. Now, as a teacher i have some translation companies in my mind to suggest my student's to buy their products. Therefore i have understood that this course is not just for my intellectual growth it is also for important for my teaching career.

To conclude translation course helped me to understand about translations and translators deeply. I could link most of the things discussed in the class with my life thanks to the different ideas, experiences and stories that are shared in the class environment. I feel that this course was very benetifical for my intellectual growth as a teacher.


Ezgi Uluer